13 April 2017
On 29 June 2015, I was discharged from the Auckland spinal rehab unit. On 17 July 2015, I went back to work. I started slow at 10 hours per week, but I was determined to get back to it. For the first couple of months, I felt like I needed work more than it needed me – like I was benefiting more from being there than anyone else was benefiting from having me in the room. I didn’t feel bad about that, but I was pleased a few months later when I felt like the balance had shifted and I was making a contribution.
Now why on earth, one might reasonably ask, would I be so keen to get back to the grind? Why would I want to go back to work, when by all accounts, I love my time away from work?
I think the answer lies first in how I identify myself, and second in what it means to have an occupation. Although I ran regularly for 30+ years, I swam well enough to do it for exercise, I played tennis socially, and I bushwalked or cycle-toured on holidays and weekends, I did not identify myself as athletic. My physical being was clearly important, but it was not my identity. My brain, my intellect, my way of thinking – that was me – and the head injury I sustained in the accident put that at risk. I needed to make sure I could still use my brain – that it was functioning and that my identity was intact.
That was me coping. That was me in the bunker pulling back to what I knew and maintaining that as my focus. For months, the phrase “keep it together” played on repeat in my head like the sound of a train.
That was also me occupying myself. I didn’t want to constantly focus on my physical situation. Of course, I attended physio sessions, I worked at the gym, I learned what I needed to learn so I was able to get around at home and get around at work. But work took me out of my own head, helped me shift my perspective for a few precious hours each day and allowed me to contribute to something outside of myself.
Coping is a beautiful thing that we all do. We can imagine a person finding that space where getting by doesn’t require any new effort and we can imagine that a person might call it home and a person might settle in there for the duration.
Alas, that content-with-coping person is not me.
Going on that holiday to Australia in December was one of my first ventures back into life. It hurt, but it was necessary. I realised how badly I need skills and purpose so that I can relearn my independence and reassert myself into the world. I won’t be the same. I won’t ever be the same, but I need to learn how to be in a world that is the same. Rather than staying with coping, I’m moving along the spectrum to adaptation.
I thought what I would be describing in this post is resilience, but being resilient means being able to withstand a shock and recover to function just as before. Being resilient means, ultimately, to be able to resist change. I’m not in a position to do that. In order to be independent and to bring my best self to the world, my whole perspective, my whole way of interacting with the world has to change.
2017 is my year of independence. In a couple of weeks, our new car will be modified with hand controls so that I can drive. Sometime later (maybe a month or so), the car will go to Christchurch to be fitted with an Abiloader so that I can go places by myself without worrying about loading and unloading the chair. Someday soon (I’m told), we will have a set of plans for modifications to our new house – modifications that will increase my independence in activities like cooking, and gardening.
I’ve also taken time off work this month and next to work with my Occupational Therapist on wheelchair skills and with a Physiotherapist on new or different sport activities. I’m trying swimming, basketball, and maybe even cycling. I want to find a sports activity that makes me stronger, sure, but also one that takes me to that lovely meditative immersive space in my head. I want to fulfill the new me – the me that is different, the me that has come to terms with a new way of being, the me that will contribute to the world in new, different and interesting ways.
My aim is to be completely independent in my new neighbourhood so I can wheel to the library, the shops, the cinema, etc by myself or with Friday. Steve is always invited, but this way, he won’t feel like he has to come out of need or “just in case” – he can come because he enjoys my company and because he knows I know where the good coffee is.
This will be the me that has not resiled, but who has adapted.